NSF Workshop on Emerging Opportunities of Nanoscience to Energy Conversion and Storage

Summary:

Nanoscience is a highly dynamic and interdisciplinary area of basic research. Recent research breakthroughs in nanoscience is providing capabilities to organize materials at the molecular scale into complex patterns using various methodologies including self-assembly of viral, peptide and DNA nanostructures. Information Science has an important role, since Computer Science techniques are used in the design and simulation of these nanostructures. Other disciplines include Physics and Chemistry; for example attachment chemistries allow for the attachment of a wide variety of distinct materials (including metallic particles, proteins, and other inorganic and organic particles and compounds) to these nanostructures at chosen sites. However, to further drive the field of Nanoscience, there is an acute need to provide high impact applications beyond a limited number of known applications to nanoelectronics and medical science. The main sessions of the workshop ran two days, Monday Nov. 21 - Tuesday Nov. 22, 2005. The location of Workshop was The Key Bridge Marriott. 1401 Lee Hwy, Arlington VI . This workshop explored the most promising emerging applications of Nanoscience to energy conversion and storage. The workshop explored possible methods for improved efficiency in the following tasks: (i) conversion to electricity of solar energy and/or heat (photo-voltaics and thermocouplers), and (ii) storage and release of energy (e.g., fuel cell and battery technology). Rather than conduct new research, the proposal tasks where restricted to study of research challenges, applications, and opportunities to NSF. To this end, the proposal requests NSF support for a limited scope NSF workshop on this topic, in the style of other NSF workshops in targeted areas of emerging interdisciplinary research. The Workshop was jointly co-Chaired by John Reif and John Monahan. The workshop brought together for the first time leading scientists with expertise in the relevant sub areas (e.g., self-assembly, quantum dots, nano-optics, DNA-metallic hybrids, etc.) to consider this topic. These experts \ranged over multiple disciplines including computer science, electrical engineering, chemistry, and physics. The workshop also included a number of leading relevant energy technology experts (in photo-voltaics, thermocouplers, fuel cell and battery technology) who will provide expertise on current the energy technologies and limitations.

Impact. This NSF workshop wase highly interdisciplinary, with participants from various areas including Computer Scienc(who have expertise in the combinatorial design and computer simulation of the nano-devices to be considered), various Engineering disciplines (Electrical, Mechanical and Material) related to energy and nano-technologies, as well as Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Physics. It impacted both the research community in Nanoscience as well as other disciplines engaged in the study of energy technologies. To insure involvement by graduate students, a number of their travel and local expenses will be supported. The PI and his institution Duke University purely as a service - there was no overhead charged on any aspect of this Workshop. The workshop also benefited the NSF to allow for the identification of targeted research opportunities and challenges in applications of key importance to US economy and industry.